re: Best Movie Posters

That "Dracula" piece looks like a herald (some folks want to refer to them as handbills), one of the more overlooked formats of movie memorabilia. They're always folded, but come in slightly different shapes and sizes. I bought a batch of about three-dozen of them in the late-1980s, all from films between about 1925 and 1934. Nothing probably all that collectible, the most prominent one being from the first version of "Show Boat" (1929). All came from a single movie-goer who kept them as mementos, with the theater's info usually stamped on back.

I think these colorful-type heralds gradually disappeared as the 1930s wore on, replaced by those duller, monotone handbills, which advertised not so much individual films but the local theater's weekly line-up. I do have one older example of a herald, which I found at a paper show many years back. It's for the 3rd episode of the "Perils of Pauline" (1914) serial. It's b&w, and shows several inset photos of the production. On the front, it touts "The Great $25,000 Eclectic Photoplay by Chas. Goddard" and "Played by the Great Pathe Players Under Special Lease." Might very likely be the oldest piece of movie memorabilia I own. Cost me all of two dollars.

"You vill vote guilty und you vill LIKE it!"

The US poster



French lobby card



I wonder if the artist was a refugee from the Russian Revolution